Prior to the announcement of Williams, Jackman retained home grown talent and Welsh International Leon Brown as well as Elliot Dee and Jack Dixon who both recently put pen to paper for the Region. He also secured Welsh qualified rugby league player Calvin Wellington who has already joined up with the squad at their training base in Ystrad Mynach.
Jackman who took over as Head Coach of the Dragons in the Summer said; “I’ve been targeting exiles, that’s not a secret, and when I speak to them their mind set has changed based on that rule. They want to come back and play in Wales to try and play international rugby.
“From my experience in Ireland, that works. Very few Irish players leave and international rugby has a really strong hold on players. It’s a really good rule that will potentially benefit us. If it doesn’t benefit us then it will benefit the Ospreys, Scarlets or Cardiff Blues.”
He continued; “We want the Regions being really strong and the best players playing for them so that the fans can come and see some of our homegrown internationals like Elliot Dee and Leon Brown at Rodney Parade.
“If we can attract a couple more from outside then that’s great. I’d like current internationals playing for the Dragons, helping us win and buying into what we do.
The Dragons were taken over by the Welsh Rugby Union in May following a vote by Newport RFC shareholders who opted to sell Rodney Parade to the WRU, and Jackman admits that the new owners aren’t giving the Men of Gwent any unfair advantages over their regional rivals.
“The WRU can help us be competitive, they already have given us great support in terms of medical, travel, strength and conditioning, coaching resources. They have been unbelievable,” said Jackman.
“But what I don’t agree with is that by helping the Dragons that deprives anyone else.
“We should have internal competition and if I was another Region I’d be saying ‘great, let’s get better ourselves’ rather than crying about it.
“We want to be stronger, why is anyone worried about the Dragons being strong? We want to be strong, let’s not be shy about that. Some people don’t want to hear that, but we as a Region want to be strong so obviously we are trying to get players.
“We have a limited amount of money and how we spend it is our own business. We want to keep our best players, which hasn’t happened in the past and other teams have profited from robbing players from the Dragons. We are now starting to keep them, some people don’t seem to be happy with that outside the Region. We are starting to recruit people and some people don’t like that.
“My job is to make the Dragons strong and David Buttress (chairman) is unbelievably supportive in that in terms of the vision. We want to see a packed Rodney Parade and a team that can lock horns with anybody. That’s where we want to get to, there are going to be difficulties but we can’t worry too much about them, we just have to make the Dragons better.”
